Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue

Book 1: Embarking Upon A New Korea

Book 2: Master Potter does Fine China

Book 3: Steppe to the Left, Steppe to the Right…

26th July, 2003 – Lanzhou, China

Oh no! Another early start, this time a mind-blowingly early six o'clock. The reason again was a trip to make, this time by public bus up into the mountains to the Tibetan town of Xiahe, (pronounced 'Shaa-ha').

Unlike the day before we managed to get to the bus station on time and climbing onto the small bus we came across something that we were by now quite unused to, other foreigners, lots of them! I suppose we should have guessed, after all Xiahe is the home of a Tibetan monastery and is there anywhere on earth more cool and spiritually fulfilling than Tibet? Why, not even India comes close to that lamatastic region in the clouds. We however just settled down at the back of the bus, ready to enjoy or journey up into the mountains.

Except that there was a problem, and that was that the journey turned out to be not that enjoyable however much you might have wanted it to be. True, the scenery wasn't bad, and for large sections the road was good too, but alas, the problem was with our mode of transportation itself. Like so many of the vehicles in China, it had unfortunately been designed for people several sizes smaller than ourselves, particularly the seats up which one's bottom simply would not fit. That wouldn't have been so bad of course if the bus had been half empty, but of course it wasn't, every available inch of space was taken, and to put the icing on the cake we got stuck behind four clones of the type produced by the English Public School System who moaned incessantly throughout the whole journey, their gripes reaching fever pitch when one of the locals started smoking and opened a window, bumping the elbow of a female clone in the process. It wasn't so bad for me mind, who simply buried myself in Middlemarch and forgot about the world outside, but for the pitiable Lowlander who cannot read on buses and had ridiculously long legs, it must have been sheer torture.

The area that we passed through gradually got colder and poorer. Mao, Deng and Jiang all seemed to have missed this area out in their modernisation process, and compared with the go-ahead areas that we'd come from, this looked positively poverty-stricken. And was it any coincidence that the locality was also predominantly Muslim, with skullcapped men and black hijaabed women roaming the streets of every town that we passed through? Was the true reason behind the poverty government prejudice or perhaps something else entirely? For example, a friend of mine once gave me a university paper to read that she'd written about the woeful economic state of Bulgaria's Rodopi Mountains; a scenic yet poverty-stricken region in the country's south, predominantly populated by Muslims. In the paper she argued that the poor levels of development there were due to governmental prejudices against Muslims. And perhaps she had a point, after all the Communist government of the time's policies ranged from uneasy tolerance to ethnic cleansing. However, on the other hand she completely failed to mention the area's remoteness and unsuitability for virtually any sort of industry or agriculture beyond sheep and goat farming. It takes many bricks to build a wall and this area looked pretty desolate and remote too, so perhaps we should not be too quick to condemn the Party.

One thing that they certainly were doing there was building a road that looked as well-engineered as the one to Bingling Si, and slowed down our progress considerably. It was five hours before we reached Linxia, a small Muslim town where the bus halted and all passengers alighted to get fed and watered.

After Linxia, the construction of the new road made progress slow indeed, but by now there was more outside to hold the attention. The countryside had changed rapidly from a hot and arid wasteland into green barren mountains, more akin to the mountains of Scotland and Wales than anywhere else that I've seen. These were the lands of the Tibetans, (millions of who actually reside outside of the boundaries of Tibet and have done for centuries), and the skullcaps and headscarves had all but disappeared from the roadside. In their place were the straw and colourful costumes of those famed mountain dwellers, and in the fields brightly-coloured yurts were pegged up, with goats beside them and TV aerials protruding from the roofs. The scenes were undeniably beautiful, and it made me want to visit the real Tibet even more than I had before. On the downside however, the temperature had now dropped somewhat, and clad in but shorts and T-shirts we shivered and suffered on the bumpy bus.

When we reached Xiahe it was raining and the town looked equally dreary. We booked in at the Dasha Binguan, an equally gloomy establishment, and I finished Middlemarch whilst we waited for a sudden downpour to abate. And thus, as soon as the sky was no longer wet, we ventured up the street, through the tacky touristdom of Chinese and Muslim Xiahe to the Tibetan part of town and the famous Labrang Monastery.

Now, I will be the first to admit here that the whole spiritual thing of travelling that so many travellers rave about, doesn't really do it for me. I've been to a lot of famed holy sites and whilst they were very nice and interesting, they did alas fail to get my religious juices going. Its not that I don't have a spiritual side mind, I do and I believe it to be something very important, but it's just that I reckon that if you're really sincere about finding God or whatever it is that might be out there, you're far better off heading to your local church or chapel, (or whatever is the religion tailored to the needs of your culture), than going off to meditate on the banks of the Ganges for a few months. No, most of the sarong-wearing backpackers who bore with their deep experiences on a higher spiritual plane are in my opinion either talking crap or simply too stoned to know what they're talking about. Either way, I'm not impressed.

All that taken into account however, I must say that the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe was something special. I'm not saying that I discovered the meaning of life or that I attained Nirvana or anything, but nonetheless it was a truly breathtaking place.

The first things that we reached were the prayer wheels, a long line of brightly-coloured upended tombolas which pilgrims spun as they walked past. Quite what the purpose behind them is, I'm not sure. Upon inspection all turned out to be painted with the same images and inscriptions and besides, I can't see that passing pilgrims having time to read what they have to say anyway. Therefore I assume that the thinking in them is something akin to the Catholics with their rosary beads; by repeating the same action over and over again, the mind is able to focus more on holy thoughts, and thus assumedly come into closer communion with the divine.

Prayer wheels

After spinning the wheels, we wandered through the streets of the monastery accommodation. It seemed as if time had stood still here, the dirt roads were bordered by ancient squat stone dwellings whilst red-robed monks and colourful pilgrims, many of whom were ancient and almost bent double, thronged the thoroughfares.

Labrang monastery scenes

And at the end of these humble dwellings were the grand buildings of the monastery itself. Capped with gold and decorated in all the colours of the rainbow, they stood out against the bleak mountain landscape. We wandered amongst them and on the pilgrim's path behind where the faithful trudged and for no apparent reason, would press their foreheads to a particular spot on the monastery wall. We passed them in the opposite direction before returning to the town by way of the riverside prayer wheels. At one point we stopped at a magnificent gold stupa, the inside of which we were shocked to find was stacked to the rafters with identical hand-written copies of a holy text.

By the main temple

Returning to the town via the spinning prayer wheels, the Lowlander and I got into a discussion about the inclusion of Tibet within the Chinese state. He of Lower Lands argued that whatever the case, it was wrong to occupy another country, but I was not so sure. After all, Tibet costs China a lot of money and it is they who have brought electricity and running water to the people, plus built roads, hospitals, schools and an airport, (they had wanted to build a railway too but it was found out to be impossible to do so as it would have involved tunnelling through ice). Surely, it is far better that they have a higher standard of living, decent healthcare and some semblance of a modern-day state, (the old Tibet for example was not even in the International Postal Union and stamps had to be bought at the border), than the pride of raising your own flag. Besides, the Chinese do have a historical claim to the country and a large percentage of the population are Han in origin. Whatever the truth is, the fact remained that we could never really judge without going there ourselves, but Tibetan independence supporters should bear one thing in mind. Those jolly, colourful people who smile at you from the pages of National Geographic live a life so hard that it doesn't bear thinking about. And all the efforts to alleviate that backwardness and hardship have 'Made in China' stamped all over them. Brad Pitt and Co. might look good in their Tibet film that was shot in the Andes, but how much did they actually help the Tibetans themselves? Think about it.

We dined that evening at a nice Tibetan restaurant, (well we had to didn't we?), but soon gave up on the local food after finding the famous champa (a sort of brown stodge) nauseous, and instead resorted to kebab and chips. And after that, a short conversation with the waitress and a few rounds of backgammon, we hit the sack. After all, the following day was to be yet another early start...

Fresco at Labrang Monastery

27th July, 2002 – Xiahe, China

The journey back to Lanzhou I must admit, did not seem half so bad as the one going. Quite why that was I know not, perhaps because there were less people on the bus, or perhaps because the worst bit of the trip (i.e. the bumpiest road), we got out of the way first? Well, whatever the case was, although the seven or so hours travelling time was still (literally) a pain in the arse, it was not nearly so taxing as before. I settled down to read The Russian Seven, an entertaining paperback about an Afghan War veteran, falsely accused of murder who travelled through the USSR on the run during perestroika, and completed the final page just as we were pulling into the city bus terminal, which was good timing if ever there was. We then transferred swiftly into a taxi and headed off to our old friend, the Lubyanka-esque Lanzhou Binguan, where we were given a room almost next-door to our previous one, and where we showered ourselves back into humanity.

After that I decided to head off to the internet café whilst the Lowlander stayed in the hotel, agreeing to meet once again at the cable car base station on the banks of the Yellow River. Alas, as so often happens when on the Information Superhighway, I lost track of the time and found to my horror when I glanced at the clock, that I was already half an hour late for our rendezvous. That lateness was only compounded when the driver behind the wheel of the taxi that I hailed, mistook my drawing of a cable car to be a boat and dropped me off at the ferry terminal, and so when I arrived almost an hour after I should have done, I expected the waiting Dutchman to be none too impressed.

I shouldn’t have worried though. Whilst he had arrived before me, it was only about five minutes before. He too had forgotten about Old Father Time, and then been taken on a tour far more elaborate than mine, crossing China’s number two river several times with a typically geographically-challenged taxi driver. Thus, both relieved at not being in each other’s bad books, we boarded the car and made our slow and steady ascent up the mountain.

Once at the top however, we decided against returning to the café where we’d dined previously, and instead to try and locate the famous White Pagoda, an eighteenth century monument that was supposedly the highlight of the mountain’s many attractions. The pagoda we soon located, but alas it was a pathetic sight compared with the one that we’d climbed at Yinchuan, and was hardly worth the effort of walking from the cable car to. It did however have one big saving grace in the form of a nice affixed tea house which commanded spectacular views over the city below, and so there we sat and started a mammoth backgammon session that proved most profitable to me. The Lowlander grew more and more exasperated with his bad luck, (though may I add here, that it wasn’t all due to luck in my opinion), and became ever more determined to play on until he won a single game. Well, that suited me and so we continued to roll until the score was five-nil in favour or Anglican party.

The Lowlander never got to see his cliff-top victory too, for at that moment we were interrupted by an inquisitive local who wished to learn the nature of the game that we were playing. Such curiosity was not unusual, many Chinese were fascinated by our backgammon set, and it would have been a great way of getting to know people if we’d shared a common tongue, but alas, in the vast majority of cases this was but a linguistic dream.

This guy however, was different. Not only did he speak English, but he spoke it well, being of a student of my tongue at Beijing University. His name was Lu, and he was an interesting guy, so we put the game away and engaged in conversation whilst his whole family crowded around and listened in.

He was, it turned out, a native of the town but presently was only visiting on holiday. The older relatives with him were his aunts and uncles, (his parents were in Guangdong), and the younger companions his cousins, (although he referred to them as brothers and sisters). His specialty, as well as English, was economics and we talked at length about China’s present position and recent history. He regarded Mao as ‘interesting’, ‘very complex’ and ‘worthy of much studying’ but of no importance to the China of today. “He is now history,” Lu explained. “He was very important, but China has moved on now.” Deng Xiaoping however, with his market reforms was to Lu a hero unmatched, whilst the present leader, Jiang Zemin got his respect as a ‘smooth’ leader who would compromise. And as for the future, well it looked like the country would be getting a new leader before twelve months was out, Hu Jintao, another man whom Lu considered to be ‘smooth’ and thus able. So, was he worried for the future? Not at all, “just ten years ago there were no tall buildings here,” he replied, “now look at it.” We gazed down at the prosperous sea of skyscrapers below. Lanzhou definitely seemed a city on the up. “Mind you,” Lu added, “they’re building a lot at the moment and that’s not just due to there being business in town. In twelve months time Lanzhou will host a big meeting of leaders, and that is why they are making everything look good. It will probably slow down afterwards.”

As darkness fell Lu and his family bid us farewell, leaving us a large bag of melon seeds to munch on, and a promise to meet up for lunch the following day. We followed soon afterwards, returning to the hotel where the Lowlander eventually got his victory, though at the cost of three more to me.

Next part: 2j: Lanzhou and Jiayuguan

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Friday, 24 May 2013

Across Asia With A Lowlander: Part 2h: Bingling-si

Greetings!

This week’s excerpt sees the Lowlander and I go on an organised day trip. I don’t usually do organised trips and if you want reminding of why, revisit the account of our trip to the Great Wall, but this was one of the better ones. The key is usually the size of the group. Tours with less than ten in the group tend to be better. Later on when I post my travelogue ‘The Missing Link’, you’ll be able to read about one of the best organised day trips that I’ve ever taken, (and the most expensive), to Chernobyl and the radioactive city of Pripyat. But for now, things aren’t quite so buzzing, in fact, with a hell of a lot of big Buddhas around, you could almost say that they are meditative.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue

Book 1: Embarking Upon A New Korea

Book 2: Master Potter does Fine China

Book 3: Steppe to the Left, Steppe to the Right…

25th July, 2002 – Lanzhou, China

We were up early again, this time due to the fact that we'd booked ourselves upon a tour of Bingling-si, or the 'Thousand Buddha Caves' the day before. Early we may have risen, but sadly not early enough, for by the time that we'd got ready, we found that we had not the time spare to grab some breakfast before heading off, which required a visit to the tasty yet expensive hotel restaurant. That completed, and with full bellies, we then sought out our minibus and departed at a time only ten minutes later than scheduled.

Our promised minibus turned out to be but a car and our fellow tourists, but a fellow Japanese gent named Mr. Endo, (a name that I remembered easily, since it is also the name of my favourite Japanese author). Endo-san turned out to be an interesting guy and a serious traveller. He was a student at Osaka University and two years ago had travelled to Portugal via China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and a number of other countries. This time his destination was Nepal, via Tibet of course, and his journey, like ours, was still in its early stages.

I was particularly looking forward to this trip. Not only did the Buddha Caves sound rather interesting, but this would be my first trip into the Chinese countryside. From what we'd seen so far, all of China's cities seemed to display an affluence above and beyond what we'd expected to find. Did that carry over to the rural areas however? Had the revolution helped the peasants from whence its father figure, Mao Tse Tung, had come?

Before hitting the fields however, we had to drive through the miles and miles of suburbs of the snake-like city of Lanzhou. Although not as rich as the centre, these areas were still well-off and the dual-carriageway upon which we travelled of excellent quality. The scene here however was more stereotypically socialist. The heavy industry of the Great Leap Forward had taken the place of the towers of commerce and the workers looked as workers should, dressed in grey or brown proletarian pyjama-type suits such as Mao made famous. Travelling through the area in the early morning was fascinating. In front of virtually every garage, factory, shop or restaurant, the staff were out doing their exercises in neat formation. I'd seen many examples of people doing gymnastics or tai chi in the parks of Beijing and Yinchuan, but all those had been voluntary and without a leader. These were more like what I'd encountered in Japan. Mandatory drills led by the fore(wo)man. A common sight in the Orient, unknown in Europe.

The countryside when it arrived, turned out to be hilly and arid, and reminded me somewhat of Albania or some of the drier parts of Greece. Unlike the stereotypes of China, there was no rice being grown here. Instead the fields were full of grain which was being harvested at the time that we passed through, resulting in rows of stooks evoking images of a bygone Europe rather than the Far East. In one village of mud-brick houses that we passed through, the peasants were stood in the road tossing the straw up into the air in an effort to sort it from the grain. The scene was one from fifty years ago, with ruddy-faced farm workers complete with straw hats and pitchforks, whilst wizened old men sat in the nearby doorways, playing go or majong, and surveying the proceedings with the eye of the wise.

Countryside scene en-route to Bingling-si

As we passed one village school I spied a large statue of Mao, arm outstretched, crumbling in the schoolyard. This surprised me somewhat since it was the first statue of the great leader that we'd seen outside of Beijing. The lack of statues or indeed any sort of socialist memorials had been puzzling us for sometime. Wherever one goes in Eastern Europe, the countryside is littered with statues of revolutionary heroes, dedications to the war dead and monuments to socialist progress. And that is after ten years of capitalism, during which countless monuments have been torn down by the people. Yet China has never had that ten years, nor any reason to rip down its images of People Power. Quite the opposite in fact, and so the question must be asked as to where are all those Mao statues and sculptures of socialism? The most probable answer is that they were never put up in the first place, which suggests that China's communism was perhaps taking a different form even before Deng Xiaoping came along, and that the personality cult of Mao was, (like most other things concerning the world behind the Bamboo and Iron Curtains), exaggerated out of all proportion by the Western media.

One thing that could not be denied however, is that the countryside has not benefitted from recent events as much as the towns, or at least, certainly not in the Gansu Province, (which incidentally is one of China's poorest). Nonetheless, the picture here is not entirely one of despair. Not once on this trip, nor indeed on any of the others that we took subsequently in China, did we see animals being used as beasts of burden, or examples of horse-drawn transportation, both common sights in the Third World and Eastern Europe. Even the poorest farmer seemed to possess a tiny three-wheel tractor or truck, and many more something far more substantial. What's more, all the houses had electricity, the stores were full and the vast majority of roads metalled. The only one that we travelled upon that wasn't was further on, nearer to Bingling-si. There our car twisted, turned, rumbled and stumbled over a dusty dirt track. But the reason for the terrible quality of that road was obvious; the normal one was being rebuilt, transformed into a well-engineered, wide highway. So well-engineered in fact that we initially thought that it was going to be railway line!

Our bumpy road ended abruptly in a small village by a huge dam. It was there that we were to transfer onto a speedboat for the next stage of our journey.

Dam across the Yellow River

As the boat sped off I had a good look at our surroundings. They were spectacular, jagged cliffs rose up on either side of the calm yellow water, some topped with a small pagoda or flag. On others, large hotels were being built and it was obvious why. With scenery this fantastic, as well as the Buddha Caves and the proximity to Lanzhou with its airport, railway station and almost four million people, it was clear that a lot of money could be made here, out of the domestic tourist market alone, let alone foreigners. And the place was so huge that over fifty hotels could be built without impacting upon the beauty of the place at all. No doubt the new road was all part of the same masterplan. China's booming economy was creating a large domestic tourist market and Bingling Si was obviously being prepared to meet this new demand. Many people may criticize such developments, but if it helps China move forwards, then I'm happy for them.

Though I'm glad that we got there first.

The boat journey was longer than I'd expected, over an hour in fact. We sped first through the rocky gorges with their pagoda-topped cliffs and then into a huge lake that took an age to cross. After that, the river narrowed once more, with steep cliffs on either side and hemmed in by the riverside, tiny pastures were sheep were kept. The boat zigzagged across the waterway to avoid the shallows and rounded a corner to reveal the most spectacular rock formations that I have ever seen. Towering pillars of igneous rock loomed up by the riverside, threatening to topple down into the water at any moment and crush our tiny boat and its occupants. And then past the rocks, we saw the Buddha Caves of Bingling Si.

Taking a trip down the Yellow River

Just above the simple quay, a large building was under construction, no doubt to hold the restaurants and souvenir shops required when the site was fully developed for tour groups. At present however, all that catered for out touristic needs were a few humble stalls offering soft drinks and family heirlooms. Our time however, was limited so we bypassed these delights and walked on to the caves themselves.

The name 'Thousand Buddha Caves' is somewhat misleading in two respects, firstly in that the caves number little under two hundred, and not a thousand, and secondly in that the word 'cave' is something of an exaggeration, and the term 'niche' is perhaps far more apt. Nonetheless, the place was well worth the visit. Set into the rockside for countless niches, ranging in size from around twenty centimetres square, to small rooms in which several people could stand, and in each cave was a figure of the Buddha or another deity. The highlight however, was a little further on, one huge sitting Buddha, similar to the famous ones at Bamiyan, (though without the Taliban alterations). We sat beneath the mighty holy man's feet and marvelled at his size, and wondered how he'd managed to live through the Cultural Revolution in tact.

Some of the ‘Thousand Caves’ (or niches…)

By the Big Buddha of Bingling

Exhausted by the visit of Uncle Travelling Matt, the great man takes a quick nap…

On the way back we stopped at some of the stalls and had a look at what they had to offer. A plate depicting Chairman Mao outside Tiananmen Gate caught my eye, and I haggled the guy down to Y20 (2.50 euros), and bought it. We then boarded the boat for the long trip home.

Back in Lanzhou we decided over lunch to try the city's other cable car which ran up the mountain on the opposite side of the valley of the one that we'd already ridden on. The only problem with that however, was finding a taxi driver who knew where it was. Despite drawing a picture of a cable car, saying it in Chinese and then showing him the characters that he learnt at school, we had no luck and in the end we got him to drop us off in the general area and we walked the rest ourselves.

The area in which the base station was situated was one of the poorest in town, and it seemed a world away from the flashy business district less than a kilometre to the north. Red brick slums jostled for space on the hillside whilst wizened crones hawked melons on the street. The was one area that had definitely been out for lunch during any Great Leap Forward.

We boarded the cable car, (which was actually a chair lift), and made our way slowly up the mountain as the lights came out. Looking down we were relieved to see that the poor area of town was tiny in relation to the rest and that the views over the city were spectacular. At the top we headed to a viewing platform adjacent to a huge temple bell, and there we sat drinking warm beer, (why can't the Chinese work out the concept of ice?), and playing some enthralling backgammon. However, with the score at two all we were eventually driven away by a party of drunk locals who found it amusing to continually ring the big bell, driving us back down the hill and gratefully into our beds.

Next part: 2i: Xiahe

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Friday, 17 May 2013

Across Asia With A Lowlander: Part 2g: Lanzhou

world-map lanzhou Greetings!

Another week, another post and this one has lots of nice images since I’ve been off from work so have had time to scan loads of my old photos in. Today

Today the Lowlander and I can be found in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province and home to over three and a half million people which is about the same as the whole of New Zealand but not enough to make it a major city in Chinese terms. It is also noticeable for lying on the Yellow River which is not that yellow, (more a mucky brown, although to be fair, yellower than the Red River which is a dark murky brown), and being home to Five Flavour Tea which is only marginally tastier than drinking the waters of the Yellow River itself.

Incidentally, some research on Google Earth has informed me that the area of stunning scenery which we passed through on the train to Lanzhou seems to be a just north-west of the city of Baiyin, the nearest place of any consequence being a town named Wuchuanxiang. It looks worth checking out and if any of you have done, please, let me know all about it!

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue

Book 1: Embarking Upon A New Korea

Book 2: Master Potter does Fine China

Book 3: Steppe to the Left, Steppe to the Right…

24th July, 2002 – Lanzhou, China

The sun's early morning rays revealed the landscape of the Gansu Province to be one of the most intriguing that I have ever seen. From my high bunk I watched as the train wound through arid hills and alongside small fields full of ripe watermelons. The Lowlander was already up and talking to a fellow passenger, a lady of his age named Lin Peng who hailed from Inner Mongolia but worked in Lanzhou selling Cashmere coats. They were as happy as two pigs in muck writing out his name in Chinese characters and talking about Mongolia, so I left them to it, and gazed out of the carriage window. The dryness here was as complete as in Ningxia, but the varying altitudes made this area far more fascinating to look at. What's more, many of the hillsides contained holes or small caves, presumably made by human hands though for what purpose I could not fathom out.

Scenes from the Lanzhou train

Like Ningxia, the area was also sparsely populated, or at least it was until we to the city of Lanzhou itself. She appeared through a gap between two hillsides, a shimmering mass of skyscrapers, straddling the Yellow River and hemmed in between the mountains. At first it seemed as if we would not be stopping there as the train thundered past on the opposite side of the valley, but then it changed direction, losing altitude and swinging over the great river (a surging mass of water that lived up to its name, looking exactly like the yellow soil bath that I'd sampled in Pusan), before following the other side of the valley down into the city's large railway station.

Approaching Lanzhou

The intrepid explorers arrive in Lanzhou

We booked in at the grand Lanzhou Binguan for the night. I'd known as soon as I'd read the description in the guidebook that this was the place for me; 'a large, fully renovated Sino-Stalinist edifice' where in the good old days all the big names had stayed. Why not play the political cadre for one night at least? After all, I still had my Mao badge on. What's more, it turned out to cost only a very proletarian Y100 per night. 'Long Live the Revolution!' say I.

Mao woz ere: The Lanzhou Binguan

After showering and settling into our new abode, it was of course time to explore the city and see the sights of which Lanzhou had a mind-boggling three in total; the Provincial Museum, and two cablecars up the mountains on either side of the city, where one may find parks, restaurants and pleasant views over the sprawling riverside metropolis. We decided to leave the cablecars for the evenings so that we could see the lights come out as well, which left only one place to visit, the highly recommended museum, situated at the opposite end of town. And to get there, we'd need a taxi.

Perhaps now is a good time to talk about the taxis of China which are interesting to say the least. For a start, I have to say that they're not bad. We had only two try and rip us off throughout the whole trip, which by any country's rating is not bad going. The first as soon as we'd got off the boat at Qingdao and the second was when we arrived at Beijing Railway Station, and taxi drivers in every country know that newcomers have no idea of prices, and if one is to try it on, those are the ideal places. All the others however were fine, all using a meter which not one of them pretended wasn't working, an annoying and frequent scam in so many countries.

No, our only gripe about them was again the bad geography. We'd encountered it first at the Post Offices on a global scale and now it came to haunt us at a more local level in taxis. Now in Britain, (and according to the Lowlander, in his homeland also), to become a taxi driver you have to pass a test, (called 'The Knowledge' I believe), showing that you actually know where places in your town and city actually are. In China however, in the unlikely event that such a test is mandatory, I assume that it is either not particularly hard, or that most taxi drivers have a severe amnesia problem. Time after time, we stepped into a taxi, gave the guy (or girl) a destination, and were met by a look of bewilderment. Was it our bad pronunciation? Not likely, we always pointed to the Chinese characters in the book. Was it that our destinations were obscure? No, we never once asked to be taken to the house of Wong Ling somewhere on Wuhuang Street just off Lingxia Avenue. No, we asked for places like the town's main park, the PSB (Chinese KGB-type place), the Provincial Museum or some famous pagoda, and every time these destinations foxed 'em. And having a map helped little either. Map-reading is, I assume, a bourgeoisie capitalist evil in China. What other explanation could there be for the fact that not one driver could pick out a railway line on one?

The situation in Lanzhou however, was compounded by the fact that unlike elsewhere in China, that fair city operated a system of two classes of taxi. Firstly, there were the green ones; Volkswagens or Citroens, normal taxis, where there was a small chance that your driver would know where your destination lies.

And then there were the yellow ones.

Lanzhou's yellow taxis were not cars but vans. You know the type, the tiny ones that the Japanese and Koreans build. Except that these ones were homemade and what's more looked like they'd been bought by the City of Lanzhou second-hand off the Taxi Corporation of Beirut. They were dented, scratched, indicatorless and wholly unroadworthy. On the plus side however, their fares started at five yuan, as opposed to seven in the green cabs. On the minus though, you could guarantee that these guys wouldn't even have a clue as to how to find the houses of their own mothers.

One of the yellow taxis

It was a yellow cab that we hailed to take us to the museum. We were dropped off at a pagoda, and after much frantic waving and pointing at the name of the museum in Chinese, our driver decided to consult his friend in the neighbouring vehicle, and after a short argument, realisation dawned, and we sped off through the city and pulled up besides that depositary of heritage.

But now it was our turn to look stupid. Like its contemporary in Yinchuan, the Gansu Provincial Museum was well and truly shut and boarded up. Driver grinned, we sighed, and back to the hotel we all went.

Still, it had not been a complete waste of money. What with our hotel being at one end of the city, and the museum at the other, en route we had got to view most of the sights of Lanzhou, and it proved to be an interesting place. Geography had conspired to make it long and thin, the city centre being over seven kilometres in length, yet less than two wide. Like Yinchuan, Qingdao and Beijing, there was money here, glass skyscrapers reached for the heavens and all around were the cranes of construction. That said however, one did get the feeling that its level of economic prosperity was not quite that of its northern neighbour. Pockets of grime still existed, and the roads were abysmal, although to be fair, that was largely due to the fact that most of the major thoroughfares were in the process of being pulled up to make way for a new two-tier urban highway system, which would also include a sparkling suspension bridge over the Yellow River. No, Lanzhou might not be a showcase city yet, but in five years time it should match any in China.

On the way back we stopped at a large pagoda gate flanked by stone lions. We were a little surprised to see Muslim men sat on the steps, but the reason soon became clear. Upon stepping through the gateway, instead of finding a temple dedicated to the Buddha, we were confronted with a large pool hall. Perhaps the original structure had become a victim to the ravage of the Cultural Revolution, or perhaps the gate had always been purely ornamental.

Upon our return to the hotel, we booked our tickets for the activities that would occupy us over the next few days at the en-site travel agents, before heading off again, this time to the cablecar with an email stop en route. We knew better than to ask the yellow taxi driver to take us to the internet cafe mentioned in the guidebook, so instead we plumped for the nearest big thing, the Communist Party Headquarters. After being driven half-way across town to the biggest department store and then directing the driver the Party HQ ourselves, we got to the cybercentre only to find it all in darkness. The fuse had blown and local adolescents and students milled around not really knowing what to do until eventually someone did something right, and the lights flashed on and they could return to their shoot-em-up games and ICQ.

Internet cafes in countries like China are quite unlike those in the West. For us the internet cafe is chiefly a place to email when away from our own PC, or perhaps to check the news at the same time. In the Second and Third Worlds however, where most people simply do not have the financial resources to buy their own computer, internet cafes take on a whole new importance. They are a place to play games, type dissertations, chat online and off, meet friends, and drink soft drinks. In fact, if anything they are more akin to youth clubs for students and other miscellaneous adolescents who often have a penchant for arcade games. And because most games take a very long time to play, then these places are usually ridiculously cheap. One hour later and one yuan down, we had surfed to satisfaction ourselves, and were out in the sunlight once again.

The cablecar turned out to be a pleasant trip indeed. It took us over the river and then up the hillside, giving fine views over the city. In fact, it would have been very romantic indeed, if I'd been sharing it with a tall slender lady with a passion for French kissing, but alas my companion, whilst tall and slender, was no lady and had a passion for belching and farting instead. Well, as Mick Jagger once said, 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' and wise words they were too, Mick, and so instead I joined the Lowlander for a game of burp tennis.

Taking the cablecar

And at the top we walked through the park to the restaurant, sat on a table overlooking the city, and whilst the sun dimmed and the neon lights grew brighter, we dined on fine food and played backgammon. And of course, the worthy two-nil winner was I, and thus the night was perfect, and even the inability of the taxi driver to find our hotel didn't bother me.

The Lowlander looking out over Lanzhou

Next part: 2h: Bingling-si

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Friday, 10 May 2013

Across Asia With A Lowlander: Part 2f: Yinchuan (II)

Greetings!

A miserable week has passed with me being laid-up in bed for most of it and the weather turning from great to grim. Oh well, that’s life and so it’s back to happier – and sunnier – times and climes when I wandered around the empty expanses of Northern China with a Dutchman.

Keep travelling!

Uncle Travelling Matt

Links to all parts of the travelogue

Book 1: Embarking Upon A New Korea

Book 2: Master Potter does Fine China

Book 3: Steppe to the Left, Steppe to the Right…